The History We Shared (I Will Always Wait For You)
by shefrommo
Summary: The Great Generals of the Black Order sit by Hevlaska and do nothing. Why? Because the Great Generals are nothing more than statues, made to honor the Generals that fell in battle. Thirty-five years ago, the Fourteenth Noah was killed and a man named Allen took his Memory with him. This is the story of General Allen Black, one of the Great Generals...and a member of the Third Side.
1. Allen's Dedication

The History We Shared

(I Will Always Wait For You)

How I Became Allen

I was four and you were six, and Mana nine, when we first met. You thought I was cute so you dragged me to meet him.

 _(I was a dirty street urchin. I still don't know what you saw in me_.)

I had no family, no money, my clothes barely fit me, and I was named after my arm. They called me Red, for my arm was red and wrinkled and the veins jutted out of the scaly skin. They called me Demon, and burned a cross into the back of my hand to 'cleanse' me. The cross filled with glowing green liquid and solidified into a crystal. They called it witchcraft and tried other ways to 'exorcise the demon' in me.

 _(They did that more often than I told you. Forgive me, for I lied to you. But I was afraid that if I told you what they'd done and their reasons for it, you'd start to think that they were right to do so. I couldn't bear the thought of losing you like that_.)

You were a noble man's son, a child who wanted for nothing, with a loving family and a good home and plenty of food. You had Mana, who was the best brother anyone could have wished for. You had your pick of friends; every child born into the middle-class and above wanted to be close to you. You picked me instead of any of them.

You saw something special in me, you said. Something that was bright and beautiful and fragile and not-quite-as-cherished as it should be. You said that since everyone was trying to cover it in dirt and hate, you would clean it off and polish it until it shone, and I along with it. You cherished me because of it.

 _(I always wondered what it was that you spoke of. You smiled at my face when you said that, but it was my dirty, horrific arm that you blessed. I used to look at my immobile appendage for hours and wonder why you liked it. I'd stare and stare, but I never saw what it was that seemed to fascinate you.)_

 _(I know what it is now, but I almost wish I didn't.)_

Your name was Nea, and after you told me what your name was you asked for mine. I told you all of the names the townspeople called me, but you only seemed to grow angrier and angrier when you heard them. You told me that those words weren't names, just insults, and ordered me to pick a new name. I didn't know what to pick, so I said that I wanted to be like you.

Mana looked at me with fear when he first saw me, but you wanted to be my friend and he could never deny you anything. When I said that I wanted to be like you, he laughed and said that I couldn't be you because only Demons could take on someone else's form.

 _(He wasn't wrong.)_

You compromised. I would be Nea II, except that wasn't really a name. So we rearranged the letters. We flipped the order of your name, and added the Roman numeral for two in the middle. I was aIIeN, and you never seemed to let me go after that.

 _(I went back onto the streets, but you visited me every day. Sometimes, Mana would drag me over to your mansion, because you'd want to visit me when you were bedridden. It was the only way to stop you from running out of the house and getting sicker.)_

How I Learned About The Holy War

When I was ten, my arm changed. I had never been able to use it; it had done nothing but cause me pain, and the one exception was you, who loved it for whatever strange reason.

When I was ten, a lady walked up to me. I remember her even now; she was Mrs. Worringson, the baker's widow. She used to chase me away with a broom anytime I came near her husband's shop. Then her husband died from sickness, and she changed.

That day, I had been sitting on our street corner, waiting for you when she stopped in front of me and just…stared.

 _(I was frightened when she did that. Now, looking back, I wish I'd run when she'd ambled up the street. Nothing good came of this encounter. Mana may have said it out of fear of me, but he hadn't been wrong when he'd said that only Demons could take on someone else's form.)_

 _(That wasn't Mrs. Worringson at all.)_

She stared at me for maybe five or six minutes, and all I did was sit on the corner and look up at her. Then she smiled. It was unnatural. The corners of her mouth split along some previously unseen seam, until all I could see was her throat, and part of her gums.

I remember someone screamed, and then everyone was looking, and then running, until only she and I were left. I don't remember if I was the one to scream or if someone else did, but I do remember that I couldn't move or breathe, so encompassed by fear was I.

Then something crawled out of her throat. It was shaped like the heart in some of the medical textbooks you and Mana had shown me. Cannons protruded where arteries should have been, and it was several times larger than her body. There was a mask in the center of the body, and it was crying. It was the most horrendous thing I'd ever seen.

 _(I've seen worse now, but the first is always the worst. That thing was an abomination of black magic. Witchcraft, they called the crystal cross on the back of my left hand. Ha. The parasite living in the body of the baker's widow was the real piece of witchcraft.)_

Faintly, I remember hearing footsteps. I would have been killed by that monstrosity, if it hadn't been for you. I heard you coming closer, calling for me, and as you came closer I was seized by the sudden realization that I was going to die. Worse, you were going to die trying to save me.

Me dying…That was okay. I had long known that I was going to die, be it from starvation, the cold, illness, or from the townspeople's abuse. I had never dreamed that I was going to die because of some monster living in the body of a spiteful old woman, but since it was a monster _from_ a spiteful old woman, it was still somewhere close to my expectations.

But you were coming, and you had been the center of my world for so long, sometimes I couldn't remember the days when we didn't know each other. It was fine if I died there, but you were too…bright and beautiful and strong and cherished in a way that I had never really been to die.

I was good for nothing even if you had never agreed, so I decided that if I was ever going to do something with my life, I better do it then.

 _(I didn't notice it then, but looking back, I almost think I can see the eerie glow filtering through the glove on my left hand, radiating from the crystal cross on my hand.)_

What I now know was an akuma, a Japanese word meaning Demon, looked at my hand. It knew what gem I carried even if then I hadn't.

 _(You had known even back then. Sometimes I wonder how early you had begun to awaken, if you sensed it on me all those years ago. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason you wanted to know me was because part of you recognized what made up my arm, and you were only trying to consciously figure out what it was.)_

 _(Sometimes, I wonder if you ever meant to get attached to me. But that thought hurts, so I try not to think of it very often.)_

"Innocence…" It rasped and I recall that my courage just about collapsed at hearing it speak.

But I heard you coming, and my bravery flowed back into me at the reminder of the reason I was going to fight back. I could panic later, I thought that day, I could wonder what it meant by that word when all was said and done.

I remember pushing all rationale away, shoving the half-formed thought that if I ran maybe I wouldn't die into the recesses of my mind with the assumption that whatever that monster was it was only after me. I remember my mind going numb with adrenalin, and feeling like a spectator watching my own body as I lunged at it.

That was when my arm changed. No longer was it an immobile, red-as-blood, scaly monstrosity. It grew, until it was as large as the houses, and paled until it was as white as the constellations we spent hours gazing at. It changed shape until it was no longer human in form, but the leg of some giant reptile. Gleaming armored plates covered it, each interlocking until the only sign that there was a seam was the thin marks where another plate grew out of my skin. The green crystal cross was still emblazoned on the back of my hand.

 _(I thought for so long that my left arm was ugly when it was deactivated. Then I thought it ugly when it was activated. Then I turned fourteen, and it was a different kind of ugly, a kind I cherished because you were so happy to see my arm like that.)_

That first activation was the only time I lost control of it. I didn't know what to do with my arm as it was – the fact I could move it was enough of a shock for me to stop my charge.

Then I experienced a horrifying realization: my useless arm was an even bigger abomination than I had originally thought! The horror increased when I realized that I had no control over it. My arm wanted to see the monster destroyed, and my shock was not enough of a deterrent to halt its bloodlust.

You came up to me just as my loathed appendage ripped through the parasite in front of me. You wrapped your arms around me, and if you had something to say to mine, I was too far into shock to hear a word of it. I only surfaced from that mind-numbing haze when we were safely back in your mansion, and there were two strangely dressed people sitting in front of us. Once they knew I was aware again, they started to explain.

My arm was one of God's Crystals, or Innocence, and was designed to destroy Akuma. Akuma were servants of a man called the Millennium Earl, and were made when someone died. The loved one of the deceased would be approached by the Earl, and would be told that they could have their loved one back. They would stand in front of a strange metal skeleton, which would be the new 'body' and call the deceased person back from the dead. The returned soul would inhabit the skeleton, and immediately be placed under the Earl's control. The final step of the process involved the newly made Akuma killing the person who called them back, then crawling into their corpse via the mouth and living their life for them.

Whenever the Akuma got hungry, they would kill. The more they killed, the closer they would get to levelling up. The one I had faced was only a Level One, the weakest level.

 _(Given the short amount of time between her husband's death and her reveal as an Akuma, Mrs. Worringson had probably only recently been turned into one. But looking back, I was just lucky that none of the others in town who were Akuma-fied people had attacked me. The cough-turned-pneumonia that had gone around earlier that winter had left plenty of people grieving, and I know now that half the townspeople were Akuma by the time I left.)_

 _(I wonder if you awakened partially and told them to leave me alone, and the Akuma of Mr. Worringson was just the one that didn't get the message. You never did say when you awoke, though so I suppose I'll just have to wonder.)_

I listened blankly to this explanation, but it wasn't until almost a week later that I understood any of it. I was aware of what they were saying, but I couldn't muster the energy to react until they got to the end.

They said that since I had Innocence, I was one of God's chosen apostles, an exorcist. Therefore, it was my duty to help the Black Order, a subsection of the Vatican, destroy the Earl and Akuma. To do so, I would need to leave town and live in the Black Order's European Branch. The Black Order would be my legal guardians, and I would never see my friends and whatever family I had again. They couldn't risk them turning me into an Akuma when I died, after all.

I refused. Maybe I would fight the Akuma, maybe I wouldn't, but either way, I wasn't leaving you and Mana and this hateful but familiar town. Unfortunately, I didn't have a choice. They took me away, and made good on their promise to cut all contact I had with you.

 _(It seemed like the end of the world then, but you were always stubborn and weren't all that keen on letting me go. I had never been as thankful for anything as I was at that moment, when you found me again.)_

How I Found Out The Truth About You

I spent four years doing my 'duty' as an exorcist, wallowing in my miserable, depressing self-pity all the while. Central, the headquarters of the Black Order, sent CROW spell casters to watch me. The CROW operatives stalked me day and night, and for four years they ensured I had no contact with either you, or Mana.

 _(I don't know if they followed me because I was a flight risk, because they knew the only reason I didn't commit suicide was because I wanted to see you again, or because for someone who had only activated my Innocence, or Invoked to use the correct terminology, once in my life, I had an abnormal synchronization rate._

 _An exorcist's position in the hierarchy of command was determined by the synch rate. If it fell below 10%, the exorcist risked becoming a Fallen Apostle and dying from the next attempted synchronization. If it rose above 100%, the exorcist joined the ranks of the incredibly powerful Generals. They took on apprentices, worked solo to recover unattached pieces of Innocence, and had authority equal to Section Chiefs. In some cases, they could overrule the Branch Director, who deployed exorcists on various missions._

 _Every once in a while, the exorcists would be required to have a lady named Hevlaska check their synch rate, and the first test was when they first arrived at the Black Order. I had only activated once when I arrived at the Black Order, but my synch rate was already almost 100% – it was 94% to be exact.)_

 _(I didn't care how high I could synchronize with my Innocence, Hand of God. I wanted to go back to being with you, and the CROW operatives had to stop me from doing everything from throwing myself off of the cliffs the European Branch was situated on to running away mid-mission to cutting my left arm off with a rusty knife I'd found in an alley. I drove them so mad, I'm surprised they never fed me poison, except every non-exorcist in the Black Order was told that we were some species of divine beings living on Earth.)_

 _(I think some of them feared me more than the Akuma and the Earl.)_

One day, shortly after Christmas and New Year's Day had passed; I was sent out to a town in Poland. I didn't bother to memorize the name or learn any of the language, I was so convinced that this would be just another nameless town in a long list of nameless towns.

I was left in one hotel room, and the CROW spell casters who were babysitting me that time were staying in another room. They weren't in at that time though, and looking back I know that they were probably reporting to Garrick Leverrier, the head of the CROW corps.

Their absence was a small mercy on their parts: That specific night was my fourteenth birthday, and I was always more miserable when I was reminded of their presence. It was extremely lucky for you and me though, that they weren't in and didn't get back until after dawn.

It was nearing midnight, and after the local church's bells rung twelve times, I would be fourteen. I was sitting gloomily on my bed and awaiting the signal that I had spent another painful year apart from you when a knock sounded at my window. I remember looking up, half wondering if the CROW had come back early, half wondering if it was the Akuma that would finally kill me.

 _(Just as I had had no illusions about how I would die back in our hometown, I had no illusions about how I would die as an exorcist. Now, however, I have no illusions about how I will die, and I refuse to allow anything else but my chosen method kill me.)  
(I will die, and, to quote your favorite song, 'your beloved face' will be the last thing I will see.)_

It was you that I saw on my windowsill, though. I remember I gaped at you for perhaps a full minute and probably would have done so for longer had you not shivered when you did.

I hopped out of bed and darted to the window to let you in. I suppose you could have been an Akuma, perhaps a Level Two, which have a wide range of abilities including everything from changing shape to look like animals to being able to spit acid to turning invisible, but the idea of you as an Akuma seemed so farfetched, it didn't even occur to me as I led you over to my bed. The sheets were thick and warm, and you needed to be under them more than I did.

Luckily for me, you weren't some monster borrowing your form, although as it turned out, calling you human was also a stretch. After our greetings, you told me that you had unbelievable news. That was your exact phrasing, _unbelievable_ , and it sort of was unbelievable. But you were able to show me what you meant, so I believed you wholeheartedly. To be honest, I would have believed you even if you had no proof and told me that you were a purple pumpkin-eater, our alternative to the Boogeyman.

You told me that the Millennium Earl wasn't working alone, which didn't surprise me. I knew that he had Akuma and Brokers, who were humans that found people willing to make the Earl's Akuma Deal and even orchestrated the deaths of some just to make more victims for their employer. You knew about the Brokers, too but said that there were more than just them helping the Earl.

You looked nervous, I remember, and frightened. I recall thinking that you looked like you were afraid I would reject you, which was stupid since I loathed the Black Order with a burning passion and would join the Earl if you asked me to. I said as much and you looked so flabbergasted when I did that only the faint fear that the CROW would come back, overhear, and get rid of you if I laughed stopped me from doing so.

Finally, you came out with the secret. The Earl was the patriarch of a family of super humans called the Noah Clan. They had these things called Noah Memories, which were a type of gene that stored a certain aspect of the originally Noah's personality and memory. The Noah Clan were the ancestors of humanity, which was wiped out after the Great Biblical Flood. All humans had an inactive Noah gene, and in a select few it was active. The ones with the active Noah genes were the members of the Noah Clan.

The Noah Clan members, among other abilities, could heal at an astonishing rate, and the only thing that could kill them was Innocence. On the off chance that one of them died, their Noah Memory would pick another ordinary human, implant itself, and then activate after a couple of years, sometimes even decades. Once it activated the previously deceased Noah would 'awaken', or be resurrected, and would go about on the Earl's business.

As far as you knew, the Earl had never been reincarnated before, and neither had you. When I asked you why you were included, you asked me not to be too mad. Then you said that the Noah could still take on their 'white' forms, but most times they had really dark gray skin, amber eyes, and a row of seven black stigmata, or crosses, on their foreheads. Then you leaned away from me, closed your eyes, and frowned.

I wanted to ask what you were doing, but before I could, your skin turned gray, and seven stigmata appeared on your forehead. When you opened your eyes, they had gone from being the color of the warm cocoa we used to drink when we were kids to the bright amber you had described. Your pupils were shaped like slits, but a closer look revealed that they were actually tiny crosses, and the shorter line was just unnoticeable due to how thin it was.

My arm twitched as I gazed at you, and I threw myself away from the bed just before Hand of God Invoked itself. You stiffened as you looked at it, and I remember that I couldn't stop begging, both for you to forgive me because I didn't mean for my Innocence to activate and for Hand of God to stop trying to attack you.

Finally, you closed your eyes again and changed back into what I guessed was your 'white' form.

 _(The term made sense then: your natural skin color may have been rather tanned, but every skin color would probably look white in comparison to the dark grey your skin became when you looked like a Noah.)_

After you changed back, Hand of God regressed back into its dormant state and you explained that Noah and Innocence are natural enemies, and often tried to attack one another on sight. Once you were sure that I wasn't frightened or angry at you, you were happy to explain more about the Noah.

There were normally Thirteen 'Apostles' as they called themselves, but you were the newly discovered Fourteenth. I suppose it was fitting then, that just as you said what number you were, the bells tolled and I turned fourteen years old. You certainly seemed to find it amusing, because you laughed and commented on it, before insisting on singing 'Happy Birthday' to me.

Each Apostle had a different ability and title. The Tenth and Eleventh were Noah's 'Bonds' and had the ability to merge into one person. The Ninth Apostle was Noah's 'Dream' and could pull people into a hallucinatory world they could mold and play with as they pleased. The bodies of Dream's victims would serve as soulless dolls for Dream to manipulate, and so long as their mind was trapped in the Dream World they would be Dream's servants.

You were the surprise Fourteenth, and you told everyone that your Noah title was 'The Musician'. It would certainly fit; Noah's Ark was actually a glowing giant cube containing the city of Eden, and the central control system was actually a piano. Anyone could play a song on it, but only the Earl and Dream could manipulate it using the musically transmitted commands. Only the First and Ninth Apostles…and you. You were the newest Noah, but you actually had better, more complete control over the Ark, hence your title of Musician.

But, you confessed to me, you didn't really think that that was your title. Every Noah remembered something from the original Noah's life that dictated which Memory they were. Noah's Wrath remembered something that made Noah angry. Noah's Lust remembered something that Noah lusted over. But the only thing you remembered was the phrase "Destroy the old and impure to Create the new and sinless," which didn't really have anything to do with music.

Also, while Hand of God proved that Innocence hated you, you didn't feel any particular animosity towards Innocence. You thought that your title might be 'the Noah of Destruction' because it felt right, but given the way you felt drawn and fascinated by the Innocence your new family turned to dust at a touch, you thought that even that might be just a nickname. You had a theory that your real title was 'the Noah of Destroyed Innocence.'

I thought that that was amazing and was jealous of you – you had two families that liked you and an amazing ability, while I was stuck with a stupid arm that didn't like you and got me trapped in a place that I hated. Words couldn't have expressed how happy I was to see you nor could they express the depths of my gratitude that you had so much and were still willing to include me.

And you were willing to include me. You rubbed the back of your head, and looked away, and acted sheepish, but I was delighted when you asked if it was okay if you ran an experiment on my arm to test your theory.

You told me that you could do things with your voice, could make things happen, and warned me that if you did what you wanted to do to my arm, you might destroy it if it failed. I was fine with that – was even ecstatic that I could get rid of my Innocence. I agreed without a second thought.

 _(Knowing what I do now about Innocence, I was so lucky that mine didn't label me a traitor to its side of the war, and turn me into a Fallen right then and there. Even if you'd cut it off immediately after the process started, there was nothing you would have been able to do to save me once I Fell.)_

 _(But I think Hand of God knew what was about to happen, and we had been pushing 99% for a while. I think it knew that this was just the push we needed to break the first Critical Synchronization Point.)_

You started singing a lullaby. I recognized it; it had been one we and Mana had written when we were younger. It was pretty enough to listen to, right up until my arm started burning. I tried not to cry out, but it had been so long since the last time I had burned my arm, much less had something burned into it, that I couldn't keep quiet. You nearly stopped at that, but the pain grew worse the quieter your music got, so you started up again.

When the song was finished, my red, scaly, demonic arm had been replaced by a black, scaly arm with red nails and the green crystal cross engraved in the back of it. It looked even worse than it had before, but you had been trying to accomplish something similar, and its altered state proved your theory, so I was happy as well.

Unfortunately, more time than we had anticipated had passed and the CROW would return soon, so you had to leave. It was one thing if they tried to execute you for seeing me, it was an entirely different matter if you were found to be a relative of the Earl's.

We promised to meet up sometime, to not let another four years pass before we saw each other again.

 _(We kept that promise. It helped that after what you did to my arm, you could pinpoint where it was, and where I was as well.)_

 _(I had to explain what happened to my arm the following morning though. I told the CROW that I had a dream where I turned you into an Akuma, and I refused to see you a slave to the Earl, and then my arm started to ache. When I woke up, it had changed form. The new form it took when activated was called Purgatory, and it was noticeably stronger. The CROW stopped following me.)_

How The Third Side Came To Light

I was twenty the next time something big happened. You and I had kept in contact throughout the years, and had even managed to meet up with Mana.

Your brother, as it turned out, had become the apprentice to a Bookman. I had never heard of them before, but you explained that the Bookmen's job was to keep unbiased records of secret history, like our war.

When Mana was seventeen, you had started living full-time in the Ark. As both of your parents had died when the Akuma had massacred the town without you there to keep their hunger at bay, he had nothing left – no home, no family, no belongings, no money, nothing but the knowledge that there was a secret war going on, and that he knew two people, one on either side of the war, personally and had no way of contacting either of them.

He somehow came across a member of the Bookman Clan, an odd fellow with makeup around his eyes so that he looked like a panda, and was apprenticed to him. Shortly after we met up in Poland, Bookman and he had shown up to record the Noah Clan's side of the war.

I remember that you were infuriated by the fact that he had gotten involved, remember that you had joined the Noah so as to keep their attention away from both of us. Your anger was well-founded. The Noah knew of Mana, since he lived with them in a house on the fringe of the Ark's city of Eden. They knew of me, since shortly after you altered my Innocence I broke the Critical Point and was made a General. They had every General's names and Innocence memorized.

I took on an apprentice named Marian Cross, and he hated the Black Order as much as I did. His Innocence came in the form of a gun named Judgement, and he had an older brother named Smith, who was a pirate. Smith was also an exorcist, but a freelance one who's Innocence took the appearance of a battleship. Marian had been caught by the Black Order after he'd separated from his brother's ship-weapon.

I let him tell his brother that he got caught, and wouldn't be able to continue traveling with him. Marian kept in contact as best he could, and disguised that fact by being as obnoxious and extravagant as possible. Maria Leverrier, a girl about Marian's age helped keep him in line; I never bothered to since I understood the reasoning behind his behavior. He eventually got strong enough that he didn't need to stay close to me and was able to travel on his own.

He knew about my continued allegiance to you, and after meeting you once, swore it to you as well. He told Maria after we separated, but she never ratted us out, despite her loyalty to the Black Order.

Things came to a head though, after Mana wasn't careful enough about meeting Maria. It was really only a brief meeting in the street; they conveniently bumped into each other and Mana said hello after apologizing.

The Earl was and still is possessive about his family, and he didn't like that you had someone from your pre-Noah life around. He used that brief meeting with Maria to declare Mana a traitor, and tried to kill him and Maria. He succeeded with my apprentice's fiancé but you jumped in and saved Mana.

 _(The Noah didn't understand your loyalty to Mana. They interpreted your saving his life as an act of betrayal. Mana ran to Marian, who contacted me over the golems. I told him to get Mana as far away as possible and to alert Bookman that he may be in danger. I was going to get you.)_

You told him to run and never stop. You told me, after I found you bleeding to death, to move on and never stop walking; to never stop living my life. I couldn't.

 _(I still can't)_

That day, ten years before, when I met the Akuma-fied Mrs. Worringson, I knew that I had been with you for so long I could no longer remember the days when you weren't the center of my world. It had been ten years since then, and that fact hadn't changed at all. My first clear memory is of meeting you. My name was taken from you. My reason for surviving my first four years in the Black Order was to find you. My reason for living for the succeeding six years in the Black Order was to be able to serve you.

I could not – _would_ not see you dead without trying something. Anything. No matter how desperate the attempt, _you had to live_. I could not live without you. And then I remembered something you had said to me, back when you first explained about the Noah family. Your memory would implant in somebody, and eventually you would take over them. Their personality and memories would become yours and yours theirs.

So I made a desperate bid for your life. Even if I had accomplished a lot of things in my life, I had always known that my greatest achievement would have something to do with you. I told you to use me as the vessel for your Memory. You weren't happy about it, but I told you that if you died and didn't let me exhaust my options, then by the time you came back, it would be to find out that I committed suicide.

You were even less enthusiastic about that idea, but if Mana had never been able to deny you anything, then you had never been able to deny me anything. You accepted, and the moment the Memory began to transfer, I knew it. It burned, and Purgatory hated it.

 _(Purgatory rarely ever denied me something that I wanted, and I guess my Innocence loved me more than it hated the Memory because it didn't make me a Fallen. Or maybe it was just repaying the debt for when you allowed it to evolve.)_

How I Got To The End Of My Life

It's been thirty-five years since that day, I think as I open my eyes. I'm sitting in a cell in the Black Order, and Timcanpy, the golem you made for me when you heard about the Order's primary method of communication, is in his large form and covered in CROW seals.

I had spent twenty or so years of the time between when I took in your memory and now seesawing between agony, sleep, and brief, blissful snatches of consciousness.

Marian had hit the Critical Point trying to save me from an enraged Road right after the Memory transfer started. The Black Order had promoted him and held a funeral for me after he told them that I'd gone after Earl.

According to his story, General Allen Black had seen had seen Maria Leverrier fall at the Earl's hand and told him to get nearby civilians and Maria's corpse out of the way while he stalled the Earl. Marian had managed to bind Requiem to him in the modified form of Grave of Maria and had gone back to save the General, but didn't manage to get there before the Earl threw a massive ball of Dark Matter at him. Marian was unable to recover either General Black's Innocence or his body, but was able to break the Critical Point while protecting himself from the blast.

Meanwhile, Marian had dropped my comatose body off with his newly-married brother and his wife Cornelia. They took care of me as the Memory and Purgatory waged war inside of me, and Marian eventually got away from the Black Order long enough to look after me as Smith went back to pirating and culling the Akuma population in the waters between England and Europe.

The conflict between your Noah Memory and my Innocence eventually resolved itself, and I woke up twenty-four years after your death in the body of a four-year-old. A mission from the Black Order soon sent my apprentice away and I returned to the streets with a once-again-immobile red left arm. Three years later, I had joined a Circus and met up with Mana.

After your death, his mind shattered. He started thinking he was seventeen again and had no memory of what he'd been doing since you left. He didn't remember Bookman, so the old panda dismissed him as his apprentice. He ended up as a traveling clown with a dog named after me.

I felt bad for him, but every time I tried to explain what happened he never believed me, and I ended up just following him around and looking after him. Eventually he named me Allen again, and adopted me. I took on the surname Walker, and when he died I went along with the Earl's attempt to make an Akuma so my arm would activate again. I got more than an activated arm for my trouble, but the Earl left to mope over you to Road when I called Mana's name, and so didn't see my Innocence.

I suppose I'm really lucky that Mana's name reminded him of you and that he was more interested in wondering what he'd done to drive you away with Dream to stay and make sure the process was a success. Had he had a little less confidence in his Akuma skeleton, he would have stuck around and figured out who I really was.

Marian picked me up after that, and tried to use his apparent older age to get me to pay his debts, but I always paid him back tenfold in training exercises afterwards. I'm sure he got his kicks out of getting to call me his apprentice when he sent me back to the Black Order.

It's interesting being in the Black Order. It's really changed from how it was all those years ago, and I'm working with some familiar faces. It's nice to meet Bookman properly, and I find it amusing that for all the care Smith took to avoid the Black Order, his son inherited his Innocence and now works for it. I wonder, though, if Lavi knows that his father was a freelance exorcist, that Marian is his uncle, that Iron Hammer used to be called Nautilus Empire, that his parents took care of me for a couple years, that I'm older than I look. I don't think he does, but I think Bookman is suspicious of my age.

 _(Iron Hammer laughed until he cried when Purgatory asked.)_

Speaking of people that should be suspicious of me, I know Kanda remembers pieces of his past life, but I find it interesting that he doesn't remember me. Yuu Tatsushi, Alma Pater, and I were … not friends exactly, but definitely friendly acquaintances. Alma Karma certainly remembered me, but he was too preoccupied with ensuring Kanda never forgot his past self to really care. Perhaps he's told Kanda about me, while they recover in the city of Mater.

Malcolm C. Leverrier, Garrick Leverrier's son and Maria's nephew, has a strong suspicion about who I really am. I think it's why he badgered Marian about 'carrying out the Fourteenth's will.' He knows that I resemble General Allen Black too much, and my Innocence likewise, for it to be a coincidence. He was fourteen when Maria died, and he'd met me before I 'died' as well.

 _(He remembers too much of us both to be fooled.)_

I sit up. Even as Link talks to me and I respond, I'm listening. You had told me your biggest secret, the one you told no one else, not even Mana. I had told you mine that night as well, and you had kept it as faithfully as I had kept yours.

Purgatory, for I have never truly thought of my Innocence as Crown Clown, had been with me since the day I was born. My first clear memory is of meeting you, but the years before it are filled with the white haze of Purgatory's translucent cape. I learned hate from the townspeople, and kindness from you, but love, devotion, and human speech I had taken from the ghostly figure of my unseen guardian.

I found out what he was after I learned of Innocence. I loathed my once-friend for years afterwards, and only made up with Purgatory after I awoke from my long sleep. Still, though I couldn't see all Innocence fragments, only my own, I could hear them, all of them, in a way that even Noise Marie couldn't. To him, they were a cacophony of sound. To me, they were people, voices, and the Black Order was a city of people unaware of the nation's worth of specters living next to them.

No Innocence fragment had a distinct voice, just as Purgatory's body was a vague outline that blurred at the edges. With each new wielder, their voices changed, but the old voice stuck around as well. Iron Hammer spoke with a deeper version of Lavi's voice, but Smith's somber tenor reverberated alongside it. Nautilus Empire had been Banshee Fantasia before Smith had owned him, and Banshee's fainter voice still screeched alongside all of the other voices Iron Hammer spoke with. Purgatory had more than seven-thousand wielders, and seven-thousand voices speak in tandem with every word he says.

I listen as Link tells me about his childhood with the Third Exorcists. I feel bad for not trying to help them more, partially because this version of Allen needs to stay separate from the old version and empathy for everybody is a good way to set my new self apart from the cold, uncaring General. Part of my distress at the news of Link's childhood stems from my still simmering hatred of the Black Order. A large part of it stems from what I am quickly beginning to realize is a symptom of your awakening.

At my side Purgatory screams in rage, all seven-thousand voices shrieking in a howl as deadly as a siren song. A cardinal comes in, but I want to run from his 'aid.' He's not human. No human speaks with one voice and one thousand simultaneously.

When Tyki arrives, I want to ask him if he's deaf; I want to correct him. Apocryphos is not an independent Innocence that self-wields. It is an Innocence fragment that, like Hevlaska's Diviner, has swallowed up its Accommodator, its wielder. Unlike with Hevlaska and Diviner, though, Apocryphos has not given its wielder the luxury of being aware of the outside world. I wonder, vaguely, if being wrapped in its embrace is anything like being trapped in Dream's world.

Before I know it, I have been taken outside and have said my goodbyes to the Noah. Lenalee has come and gone, and I have opened a gate to the city of Eden. I'm walking down the streets, heading to the house that Mana and Bookman lived in thirty-five years ago. The pangs are getting stronger, and I've come to the brink of death enough times to know when I'm dying.

Your favorite song carried a verse that read something along the lines of "your beloved face." I've pretended otherwise for years, but my ultimate goal was to die, with the image of your face in the mirror as the last thing I see.

Purgatory wraps around me, Tim settles on my shoulder, and I collapse onto your favorite chair in Mana's old house. I tilt my head back and pick up the mirror the city of Eden has provided me.

"Tim," I start. "Tell Nea when you see him that this was precisely the way I wanted to die. Tell him that after all the history we shared, I could only wait for him if he would come back to life through me. And if he ever gets to the afterlife…tell him that I said 'I will always wait for you there'. And Purgatory…please forgive me for leaving you with him. You've been so patient with me, and I really deserved to Fall years ago. Please put up with him, and try not to bring him harm." I smile, and see your beloved face in the mirror. It's the last thing I see, and Tim and Purgatory's sad crooning and soft requiems are the last I hear.

I feel hot, and then everything fades to black.


	2. Nea's Regrets

How I Met Allen

My first memory is of voices singing. Some, I know, are Mother and Father's voices. Mother had the most exquisite voice, and Father could have been a professional singer if he'd ever wanted to be one.

Most were disembodied. Or rather, he was disembodied.

When I was two, Father fired one of the maids. Mother's favorite rosary had gone missing, and the maid had been the last one seen with it. I found out later that she was pregnant and that she died in childbirth. Her son survived, but was tossed out on the streets for having a demonic arm.

The voices followed him. That was how I first met Allen. I was walking along the streets and I heard the voices that had vanished four years beforehand. Honestly, I'm surprised I still recognized them, but it was rather hard to mistake seven-thousand voices speaking in tandem, and they weren't very good at being quiet anyway.

The little boy seemed so fragile back then, and I couldn't suppress my anger at his so-called names. The only time Father and Mother had ever called me anything similar was when we were playing games, and I knew that they never meant them seriously. The voices seemed equally angry, but Mana was oddly quiet on the matter.

 _(Mana had never liked Allen. He had always looked at him like he was a monster, even when we had grown up together. I suppose that it makes sense that Mana cursed Allen in the end; 'raising' him didn't make his hatred abate any.)_

How I Got Involved In The Holy War

I like to think that I got involved as soon as Allen was taken away, but that wasn't really the case. Two years after Allen was taken away from me, I awoke as a Noah. It hurt. A lot. The only thing that hurt more when it was over was looking at the Earl's outfit. As sad as it is his current day collection of top hats is actually really tame compared to what he used to wear.

 _(I guess that if there was one thing that I succeeded in doing, it was convincing him to wear something else. No matter what he seemed to think, lime green and neon pink were not appropriate colors for a pinstriped suit, especially not if he was going to sew canary-yellow polka dots onto it.)_

Once I awoke and proved to have no idea what the other Noah were talking about when they asked me how I became a Noah, they took me with them to live in the Ark. At first I didn't have anything resembling a Noah Memory, so they stopped prying after a while. When I started hearing people talking about Destruction the way they remembered Noah talking about the focal point of their Memory, I had already discovered that my music lessons afforded me more control over the Ark than anyone else had. I told them that I thought my role in the Noah Clan was to be the Musician.

 _(I told them nothing of my thoughts on Destruction. When they took me away from my parents and brother, I told them not to let the Akuma kill them. I found out a few weeks later that they had deliberately ordered the Akuma to kill my parents. Only a stroll in the nearby woods saved Mana from a similar fate. If they were going to ignore my wishes, then they could stew in their ignorance of my real purpose.)_

 _(It didn't affect their attitudes any. I suppose they thought I didn't know. But Mana came for me; did they really think that he wouldn't tell me what happened to our parents? Granted, I already knew but did they really take me for a fool? I was smart, I knew how to lie and how to learn from watching others; learning how to command the Akuma to tell me about anything my so-called family ordered them to do was easy. They never bothered to teach me to do that but they never stopped doing it in front of me, and they were so used to family members telling everyone else their secrets that it never occurred to them that I could and would lie to them about knowing how to order around the Akuma.)_

 _(Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice…well, they did it more than twice, so all the more shame on them, I suppose.)_

How I Made My Dearest Friend A Walking Target

Allen alone knew my theories about myself. I met him two years after I awoke, by just as big of a coincidence as the first time. Like our first meeting, I heard Purgatory speaking and followed the choir of his voice to Allen.

This time, it was freezing out.

I had put up my winter jacket in the Ark and was about to close the Ark's Gate when I heard Purgatory's unmistakable voice filter through it. Immediately, all coherent thought had rushed out of my mind, all thoughts save one: that I had finally found Allen. I'm happy I found him then – even a few hours later and he would have left and been out of my reach, possibly for forever.

I told him all of my secrets in that tiny, thin-walled, chilly hotel room, and he accepted every single one of them. It was as though he didn't care that I was an enemy; that I could and should kill him. I was astonished and touched by his loyalty.

 _(Looking back; I can see how naïve I was. Allen would have hung the moon for me had I asked and while I knew that he adored me, back then I didn't quite understand just how much he did. Sometimes I feel like I just took advantage of his loyalty to do things that hurt him in the long run. What happened next is Exhibit A of this theory.)_

I had then asked to; in order to test my idea, do an experiment on his arm.

 _(On_ him _, and how I did not see how dangerous that was for him, I'll never know.)_

 _(The folly of youth excuse only extends so far, after all, and some things are just unforgiveable. Even – or perhaps especially – when I am the one doing them.)_

Allen agreed to it.

 _(Of course he did. Allen was fearless when it came to me, and it would never have occurred to him to say no. The only time he feared something involving me was when his fears that I would one day abandon him reared their ugly heads.)_

It worked, and Allen –

 _(Dear, brilliant, selfless,_ reckless _Allen –)_

Allen was thrilled for me. I was…delighted that my idea had merit; that it had produced a result when I hadn't fully believed it would…but that joy was marred by the pain that Allen had displayed during my song. I pretended elation for his sake. Inside I was horrified. What had I done? I had harmed Allen, willingly, _enthusiastically_ no less.

I could feel how Hand of God had improved after my lullaby, but the eye's input is hard to deny. I may have been able to feel how much stronger Hand of God was, to hear how pleased Allen's Innocence was with his new form, but my eyes told me that Allen's hand had gone from looking like it was burned to looking like it was dead.

 _(I understood my mistake almost immediately. Unfortunately, I did not realize in time to stop it, nor did I understand just how badly I had messed up.)_

 _('_ What have I done _?' is a phrase often repeated in my mind, more frequently when I first learned of Allen's promotion.)_

 _(Most frequently now.)_

I had to leave soon afterwards, to avoid the CROW stalking Allen. We were lucky, honestly, to have had that much time together, and barely two months later, I learned the true consequences of my visit.

Allen broke the Critical Point.

I was delighted that he had survived that Akuma attack, of course. But…the Earl was furious.

 _(I had done more than I had initially suspected, when I had altered Hand of God.)_

Hand of God, now renamed Purgatory, had gone from Allen's scaled hand to a pale cape and a masquerade mask. Purgatory was beautiful, the image of an angel playing dress up with mere mortals, and lethal beyond all imagining. Allen's bestial arm had transformed into an equally inhumane appendage, although this one resembled spider's legs more than a dragon's leg.

More importantly, Allen had gone from an unimportant exorcist with an easily forgettable piece of Innocence to someone with a highly recognizable one. And, oh, how recognizable Purgatory now was…

Beautiful, inhumane, and lethal all described Purgatory in his normal form. Once Allen struck the Critical Point; however, Purgatory's spider's arm became a sword. And it was this sword; snow white where Allen's arm was coal black, polished silver where Allen's arm was once a tarnished gray; that the Noah took note of.

 _(Like Purgatory's arm, it was delicate and deadly – but it bore my mark more prominently than Purgatory normally did. I suppose I should be more grateful that my detestable relatives did not realize_ why _the handle of Allen's Symphony of the Lost was shaped like a treble clef.)_

 _(Still, there is a part of me that is selfishly grateful that my handiwork was displayed so brazenly. Allen's rapier was a thing of beauty; that it functioned as a very sharp conductor's baton was the icing on the metaphorical cake.)_

 _(It makes it all the more ironic that nobody realized I aided Purgatory's reforming. Music is and always will be my prime talent, my signature. Symphony of the Lost had a symbol used exclusively in music for a handle, was named after a form of music, and, depending on how it was waved, generated a range of different melodies. Choir of Angels, Requiem for the Damned, Lost Ones' Orchestra…they were all music related for a reason. I find it strange that my relatives never realized the connection between them and me.)_

 _(Wondering about it is pointless now. With the passing of my Memory, Purgatory absorbed my Sword of Purification. Critical Point Breakthrough no longer prompts the summoning of Allen's once-famed Symphony of the Lost. Now, it is my Sword that appears.)_

Allen's Critical Point rapier, Symphony of the Lost, was a wide-area weapon. In his normal form, Purgatory was fairly limited in how far he could attack. As Symphony of the Lost, his every move could massacre Akuma.

Choir of Angels stripped every Akuma that heard the melody of their human shell and paralyzed them. Requiem for the Damned prompted every Akuma to detonate on the spot. Lost Ones' Orchestra temporarily took control of any Akuma in a five foot radius and with every swell of the music caused them to attack another Akuma. They could be blended together and used in tandem.

They were perfect for killing Akuma swarms in one go.

With Hand of God, Allen was safe in his anonymity. With Purgatory, he was the most dangerous of the Generals.

 _(No matter how much time passes, I will never forgive myself for making my dearest friend such a target.)_

 _(The Earl wanted him dead almost more than he wanted to crush the Heart of Innocence.)_

How I Doomed Allen To 35 Years of Misery

When I saw the Earl attack Mana, I protected him. How could I not? Mana was all that I had left of my first family. I would not – could not – let the Earl take him away.

I had always felt like the Noah did not want me around. This was understandable. They had lived for millennia as a happy little family of genocidal psychopaths. I was the interloper; the unwanted, unknown sibling they didn't know existed.

 _(It was, as Allen once said, like they were a family and then, one day, they were told that Daddy dearest had had an 'accident' and they had a baby sibling. Except that wasn't how Noah were made, and they knew it. It just served to make me all the more of an outsider.)_

They had never bothered to teach me any Noah things. While I understood that my Noah skill was something that only I could do, and they wouldn't be able to advise me on how to use it based on how my past lives had done so since I was the first Fourteenth…I was fourteen when I awoke and I had no idea what was going on. Allen's briefing on the Holy War hadn't gone over anything pertaining to the Noah and an explanation beyond _"We're the several thousand years old reincarnations of a biblical character who is not as nice as the Bible makes him seem"_ would have been much appreciated. I had had to teach myself everything, including how to control the Akuma. They had simply…not seemed to want me around.

So, when I attacked the Earl for trying to kill Mana, I did so out of desperation. Mana was the last family member that I had that still seemed to want me; was one of two people who still cared about me, since clearly, the Noah didn't. I refused to lose him to the people that had ensured that I only had two people who cared about me.

The other Noah came to the Earl's rescue. Or rather, they attempted to and I cut them down. I chopped them to pieces with my Sword of Purification – which I'm certain they didn't know I had. They seemed to be of the mistaken impression that I, like Wisely, was incapable of taking care of myself.

 _(My Sword…I do believe it was made of Innocence. It never spoke to me, despite my best efforts to converse, and I knew that they understood me. Never speaking does not mean that they did not respond, after all, even if those responses were mostly impressions I got of reactions.)_

 _(I don't think that Purgatory could have 'absorbed' them if they weren't.)_

When Allen came to aid me, it was to find that I was dying. He, despite my efforts to convince him otherwise, insisted on taking on my Memory. I made a deal with him when I failed to convince him not to take my Memory.

He would take my Memory, and I would be reborn in his body. In return, he would live as long – and as happily – as he could manage. And he would take my Sword of Purification. Two swords would be better than one after all, and I had no illusions about what would happen when my remaining siblings discovered what we had done.

Just before my vision went black, my _darling_ little sister, Road, came careening around the corner to the alley I had hidden myself in. She was furious with me, and wanted to take it out on my dearest Allen.

Allen, for his part was in no shape to be fighting a Noah, even one as weak as Road was then. He had already mostly succumbed to pain by then, and had toppled over screaming. I feared for his life in that last moment. Then everything went black for a long time.

 _(I needn't have worried. Marian, that rebellious little brat that Allen had taught, had come back to find my Allen. He stalled Road long enough to take Allen and my corpse and run. He burned my body later on and left my dear at his brother's home.)_

How Allen Died And I Returned To Life

My first stirring in Allen's body occurred so fleetingly that I am not certain that I did not dream it.

 _(Except, of course, I did not dream in the time between my death and my awakening. So it is most likely less of a fever dream and more of a very blurry memory.)_

Allen, I dimly recognized, was in pain. A great deal of pain and agony –

 _(Everything that I wanted to save him from – )_

But there was nothing I could really do about it. I tried to help anyway. I am not certain if I succeeded, but I vaguely recall speaking to him.

It was strange.

We were in some odd dreamlike world, and I knelt at the banks of a lake and peered in. Instead of my reflection, I saw Allen. He was white-haired, scarred, and younger than I remembered him being. I spied Hand of God attached to the stump of his left arm, which should not have been possible since I knew what Purgatory looked like, having been partially his creator. In the background, I could just barely hear Purgatory speak; the words distorted by distance.

 _(Faintly, I thought I heard him beg for Allen to wake up – to_ survive _.)_

Allen cried when he saw me. I told him not to cry, told him to tell me what was going on, _why was he in such pain…?_ but before he could respond, the dream fractured and I fell into the black abyss of my dormancy.

Moments, hours, days discarded like forgotten wishes, later and I stirred briefly at a thought. Music, I had thought, dizzily. The Ark is controlled by music. The most important song was – my mind faded again. For an instant, though, I was struck by an odd image – Allen at my piano, injured and half dressed, his clothing was so tattered. For an instant I heard him sing the lullaby I had written for the Ark.

The next time I saw him, I got a better look at my dearest friend. He was indeed white-haired and scarred. He was also much shorter than I recalled him to be. I had not seen him that small since he was fourteen or fifteen.

He was wearing the uniform of the Black Order again, although it did not seem to be the General's uniform I remembered so vividly. Tim was floating by his side; a young man with golden hair behind both of them, and…Allen's hair was short.

It was the oddest thing to notice, and the most inconsequential considering that Allen was about five years younger than I remembered him, but it struck me as the most important detail about him.

Allen wore his hair long. He had kept it long when we were growing up since he could not afford a trip to the barber's shop, and had kept it that way through the years. I could scarcely remember a time when Allen wore his hair short – he tended to tug on the strands when he was thinking and it always frustrated him when he could not reach them.

 _(He looked…incomplete, almost, without his hair long and a necktie draped over his shoulder. I missed those ties. It had started out as an inside joke in the years between when Purgatory evolved and when I died. After the conversation that started it all, though, Allen had kept using neckties as hair ties. I'm fairly certain he did it to annoy Marian, who would always complain that neckties were supposed to worn around one's neck, not in their hair. He had memorized a whole speech about why Allen should tie his shirt shut with his ties, instead of using them to tie his hair back.)_

 _(I think I memorized that speech just by listening to it so many times.)_

Allen was stunned to see me, and after a moment, when I tried to reach him, to touch him, to do _anything_ , I realized that somehow I was inside a mirror. How I had gotten there I had no idea. Allen could see me, I knew that by his reaction, but it would seem that no one else could.

We could not interact. I followed him around all day and night, hovering unseen to all but one in the mirrors he passed by. I gave him as much privacy as I could when I could not stray from his side.

I witnessed his life in the Black Order. It was…interesting to put it mildly. Infuriating at times. Kanda was irritating, Lenalee barely better, and the less said about Komui, Krory, Miranda, Noise, and the rest, the better. I found Lavi tolerable and Bookman interesting. Marian, it seemed, had managed to devolve following my demise. My Allen was not even able to rein him in due to Central's interference.

The golden haired man, as it turned out, was a CROW spy who was under orders to not even bother with trying to be subtle about his stalking. I was not impressed. The only redeeming quality he had, as far as I was concerned, was his refusal to follow my dear friend into the restroom. Well, that and his insistence on making sure Allen was fine.

Honestly, I had told Allen to take care of himself after I died, but it would seem that he hadn't even bothered to try. My closest friend was miserable in the Black Order but stayed there anyway. Finally I asked him why.

Allen, predictably, did not understand what I was saying and didn't respond. Surprisingly, it was Purgatory who deigned to answer.

 _(Apparently, Purgatory had been able to hear me all along, but had decided not to respond. Neither Allen nor I was very pleased with him. He, of course, didn't care about our opinions on the matter.)_

I was ridiculously exasperated with Allen when Purgatory was finished. I told Allen to take care of himself and his solution to that was to go back to the place he hated with a burning passion, to interact with people who could easily blow his cover and whom he also hated, just so he had access to medical services, food, and money? He went back to place he would have gladly torn apart with his bare hands…because it conveniently took care of his basic survival needs?

Allen, I knew, was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Having access to medical services was really the only benefit to going back to the Black Order. Everything else Allen was perfectly capable of getting for himself.

After a lot of prodding – or pleading looks through the compact mirror, really – Allen quietly confessed that he hadn't dealt with my death all that well, and had decided to rejoin the Black Order so that he could at least pretend to be General Allen Black, my secret exorcist comrade.

Both Purgatory and I told him that the fact he had not dealt with my death very well was perfectly obvious and that we thought that he should leave and go somewhere that would make him happy. We also informed him that change of name or not, he was still Allen, the boy that Purgatory had raised and I had named and grown up with. Allen's surname did not really matter; especially considering that he only went by Black since the people in the Black Order were not very creative and needed a surname for him, and Mana was completely out of his mind when he picked up the surname Walker.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to continue that conversation. The CROW spy soon returned to our corner of the library and asked to know why Allen was taking so long to get to the dining hall when he was normally the first one there.

I silently fumed. Did that cretin not know how hard it was to get Allen to respond honestly to questions about his health? Purgatory and I would have to restart all over again now that we had been interrupted!

 _(We never did get to finish that conversation. The Earl decided to wake Alma Karma back up – and why my most loathed relatives decided to 'adopt' an exorcist is beyond me; it may have been 35 years but I still knew them well enough to know how very intolerant they would be to that unconscious exorcist – and Allen was soon thrown into a cell to rot and wither in.)_

( _How dare they? Some part of me is furious and raging and a hair's breadth away from storming over to the Black Order and killing the foolish humans inside – the humans Allen, my aIIeN, bled for and suffered for – but yet; those same humans are the ones my aIIeN nearly gave his life for. He would never forgive me for killing them.)_

 _(I do not want Allen to die hating me for this – for killing the CROW spy he feels he failed somehow, for killing the son of the man and woman who cared for him in those long years after my death. I cannot do anything to anger him now because we are at the end of the line. I do not know how I can tell this but I know that it is true.)_

 _(Allen's life will end before daybreak.)_

 _(I will never forgive myself for this.)_

I raged when Apocryphos arrives. I had been hearing its discordant song for days now, but hadn't thought anything of it. Many times in my travels I have heard its voices speak, giving the vague illusion of voices singing each word in a terribly off-key manner. I had foolishly assumed that it meant nothing – that the cruel fragment was simply passing by as it had so many times before, but clearly that was not the case.

It had come for Allen, for Purgatory. Secretive jerk that he may have been, I did not wish for Purgatory to be separated from my Allen. Purgatory had been with Allen since before my dearest friend had even been born. Allen may have been my confidant and closest friend, the younger brother I had always wanted, but he was all but Purgatory's son and I remember the horrified grief I felt when my parents died well enough to want to spare Purgatory the grief of leaving Allen.

More importantly, I knew Purgatory's presence was all that was stopping my Noah Memory from killing Allen. I did not want my Allen to die because of one Innocence fragment's arrogance.

In the end, Apocryphos was not the death of Allen, but I was.

This outcome was…expected, but I had never, ever, _ever_ wanted it to happen.

 _(_ _Allen._ _Purgatory murmured._ _Allen._ _It is all he has said since I had felt Allen's presence flee our shared body entirely and I awoke alone in our body.)_

 _(I have never resented myself more for something technically out of my control, and that includes the incident that resulted in Allen being discovered by the Black Order.)_

I take a deep breath, and peer into the mirror Allen had held in his last moments. I am peripherally aware of the fact that Allen would not want me to grieve, that he had died exactly the way he had wanted to.

I do not want to think like that. I will wallow in my grief as long as I can, and will hopefully never come out of it.

aIIeN deserves nothing less than my eternal remembrance.


	3. Purgatory's Reflection

**Warnings:** Mentions of non-explicit murder and rape. Please don't read the last section if that will freak you out. Additionally, there is lots of severely mangled Christian lore…But it's the origin story of the Ark, Innocence, and the Noah Clan, so take that as you will.

 **Extra Note:** There's extra info about my dumping ground for potential THWS spin-offs in the Author's Note below. Please read if that interests you! Be warned for chapter spoilers down there, though.

How I Reunited With My Evening Child

I was but one of the many Innocence fragments charged with protecting the Heart. Collectively we are known as Apocryphos, but few of us choose to call ourselves that.

 _(Only the young, foolish, arrogant upstarts do…)_

I was attending my Master, as I always do, when it happened. I heard the familiar siren song of a potential host, an exorcist just waiting to be bonded with. I hesitated.

My Master was, at that time at least, far too small to be left alone for the moment.

After another moment of contemplation, I followed the call of my future partner. It would be worth the wait to return in a stronger, more capable form. Besides, the humans could and would watch over him until I returned. There were none of the Earl's minions about anyway.

 _(They did not show up until much later…)_

I was surprised to discover that the alluring song was originating from an unborn child, but while it took me a moment I eventually recognized the sound that the child's soul made.

 _(This, in truth, was what made us pick our wielders. There were many criteria for the position, of course, but this was the most important one._

 _To be considered in the first place, a potential host must be compatible with Innocence. The song that their soul sings must be audible to us. As my aIIeN knows, each Innocence can speak. What he cannot hear is the song that human souls sing as well. The Earl has only the faintest hearing where souls are concerned; it is barely enough for him to summon the souls for his accursed Akuma. While all human souls sing, only a statistical minority of them sing at such a pitch that we hear them as well._

 _There are a great many human souls that can sing at pitches that we can hear. It is only the sheer size of the human population that prevents them from being considered the majority of the race._

 _Once we hear them, the fact that they are compatible with Innocence is established. The next step to determining if we would work alongside them was their psychological state. Where they capable of handling the stress of being an exorcist? When they were thrown into this "Holy War," would they do their job or would they back out and refuse to fight? We have no use for Accommodators that have no will to fight, to survive, when placed in such a situation._

 _When the psychological tests proved positive, we began to test them physically. What would they respond to? Were there any disabilities to be accounted for? A missing arm could be replaced. Damaged legs could be augmented. If there were no reasons to become a part of their body, then most of us wouldn't bother. Only a few of us, such as Lau Jimin and Tsukikami, prefer to be parasitic-types._

 _When we finish determining whether or not being a parasitic-type would be necessary, we take on the form we need and attach ourselves to our hosts._

 _This is how we pick our Accommodators. The Black Order scientists would never find a way to replicate our work. Humans are far, far too blind and deaf to ever do so.)_

It had been a long time since I had heard that particular song, and I attached myself immediately. My Master's Favored had returned, and if more than an eternity's worth of lives was any indication, Eve would be happy to fight.

 _(Eve was always ready to fight. It didn't matter if she was born a man or a woman, if she was young or old, if she fought because someone told her to or because she wanted to, Eve was always,_ always _spoiling for a fight.)_

 _(That was what made her my Master's Favored, after all.)_

I was…startled…when Master's father dismissed the mother of Eve. He seemed to think that she had stolen his wife's favorite bejeweled bauble. She hadn't of course; the bauble was my physical form while I guarded Master, but with an exorcist to bond with, I had dissolved my physical form and entered the woman's womb. She died only a few months later, during the childbirth.

I did not particularly care about her, although her dismissal from Master's household was very inconvenient in that she was no longer around Master and therefore made it more difficult to watch over both Eve and Master.

Eve was born a boy this time, and that did not make any particular difference to me; however, the issue was that I had no name other than his very first name to call him by. The mother had not lived long enough to name him.

I called him "Evening Child" while he was young. He did not seem to mind.

When he was four, my Evening Child returned to his rightful place at Master's side. Master, at last, gave my wielder a proper name. I was very pleased.

 _(aIIeN was equally pleased with his new name, although he did not understand just how right it was that Master had once again named his Favored.)_

 _(Such occurrences were so few and far between that they should always be celebrated.)_

And so, life continued onwards. Master and Allen gravitated towards each other as they always had –

 _(Some souls take comfort in reincarnating in familiar groups, surrounded by other souls whom have been their family for so long that they no longer know what it is like to be without them._

 _Where does this same comfort between Master and Eve end and where does the concept of soulmates begin? Are they not the same thing by now? They are always together, in their incarnations, in some way that even we do not see until long after the fact…)_

– and for a long while, the world seemed at peace in that tiny town.

 _(It was not to last.)_

The Divorce and Reconciliation of Master and Allen

I was concerned when the Akuma strolled up to Allen and stopped to drool over him, as though he were some fine pastry in a shop window.

I cried a warning that Allen did not listen to. Children seldom make the smart decisions and Allen, while Master's Favored and the reincarnation of one of the mightiest warriors that I had ever known so many times over that I could no longer count Eve's lives, was still just a child.

He did not listen and nearly died for it.

I Invoked for the first time in Allen's short life. He was not happy to see me.

Frankly, I was not happy with myself either. Soon after the Invocation ended, Allen was dragged away by the Black Order fools and I was forced to bid my Master goodbye for the next few years.

Allen refused to speak to me during that time, and while I wanted to shake some sense into him, I knew that I couldn't. Master alone could talk sense into Eve. There was no point in me wasting my time attempting the impossible.

 _(Oftentimes, when Eve refused to fight, Master was the one to give her the inspiration to do so. Some lives he was a soldier by her side, others he was the bait she was desperately attempting to reach…whatever the circumstances, Master could always get Eve to do what he wanted her to do._

 _Master may not have acknowledged that in this most recent life, but subconsciously he wanted Adam to pay, and so, despite all of his verbal urgings otherwise, Allen fought Adam._

 _Eve always did know what her husband really wanted her to do. She had such a soft spot for him, as well… It wasn't just Master who was softer when it came to their spouse.)_

Finally, we reunited with Master. As I had suspected, Master had come into his abilities fully. It had been a long time since the previous occasion, but I still remembered the feeling as Master Awoke. Even so, the feeling only dispersed what very little doubt I had as to the fact that this would be one of his Awakened lives. All of the other signs were there, after all…

It happened rarely, and Master never remembered each occurrence. The trade-off for inheriting his abilities in full was that he could never remember the full details of how they worked or why he had them. He would have to start over from scratch each life.

Of course, the lives that his abilities were absent in were the ones when he remembered everything. That Master had not recognized me despite my centuries of servitude had been but the first sign that he would Awaken in this life.

Allen and Master were beyond delighted to reunite with one another. They exchanged the most important information that either of them had come across, before their forced separation.

Still, I was relieved to have come away with both the stronger form I had dreamt of when I first heard Eve's soul's song, and with the knowledge that my Master and Allen were together again. There was nothing as unsettling as the idea of them being apart, and the knowledge that the separation forced upon them by others was finally over was quite the relief.

 _(Master was again Eve's inspiration to fight. Allen had not wanted to be a part of this accursed family feud, and only consented to combat once Master had given him a goal.)_

How Everything Went Wrong

I was delighted by Allen's dedication to Master's cause –

 _(Everything was as it should be –)_

– but like all bouts of happiness in this most recent time, it was not to last. The Earl attacked Master's brother, and Master sought revenge for this slight. I was terrified. Master was not yet strong enough to fight off his wayward twin.

 _(I had seen Master die too many times at Adam's hands. My only consolation was that Adam was too fragmented to remember who Master really was.)_

My fears proved true. Master was fatally wounded in their fight, and Allen arrived just in time to witness his death. He promised, in those last few desperate minutes, to carry Master's Noah Memory with him.

I protested, but was ignored.

 _(Master was not a member of the Noah Clan. Master had never been a member of the Noah Clan. They thought he was, they felt the tremors of his Awakening as well as all of us Innocence did, but they misunderstood what it meant._

 _The tremors they felt were not shivers of joy at the birth of a family member. They were the symptoms of pure, if long-forgotten, rage.)_

 _(Adam and Noah had never gotten along…)_

In the confusion following this promise, Final Stand and I joined. We were both Master's guardians, and we were determined to look out for Master during the long years of his sleep.

Final Stand, however, had been "born" long after Eve had passed away, and he had never met her before. He attempted to force Master to awaken early, and it tortured Eve's soul.

I spent those long years fighting my younger sibling, preventing him from awakening Master before his time. Nautilus Empire watched over us carefully, but did not interfere.

 _(I appreciated that. Nautilus Empire was one of the few Apocryphos older than I, and we had both served as Master's guardians long enough to know the rules and nuances to Master's revival. Final Stand, however, had only been an Apocryphos for a short time and had no idea what he was attempting to do. He assumed that since he was Master's weapon, he had seniority in all matters regarding Master._

 _As Eve's weapon, it was my duty to watch over her and Master. Because Master was reincarnating in Eve's body and I was older than Final Stand, I was the one who had final say in matters regarding their safety._

 _Final Stand, rather arrogantly, disagreed.)_

 _(At least Nautilus Empire knew his place on the hierarchy.)_

Finally, I convinced Final Stand to submit to my whims and we awaited Master and Allen's awakenings.

Exhausted as they were from our battle, and the stress of Master's death, they did not do so for a while.

Eve finally awoke again, and Allen returned to the streets. He did not wish to trouble Smith Cross or his wife any longer. We stayed in the port town for a while, watching as Marian Cross and his brother met up. Lavi Cross was an excited spectator to his father's meetings.

 _(Lavi no longer remembers this, but he originally got his eyepatch in order to emulate his pirate captain of a father. He was so excited whenever Nautilus Empire would Invoke and the ghostly veil would fall over Smith's ship and my brother's namesake.)_

 _(Then again, Lavi doesn't remember much of anything important these days.)_

Nautilus Empire and I watched as an Akuma attack killed Nautilus' wielder, Smith Cross, while he was at sea. The brave man sent his crew onwards with Nautilus in the moments before his and his wife's deaths, and Lavi resonated with his father's ex-partner. Nautilus was delighted.

 _(The Cross family did have a bizarrely large number of exorcists in their history. Nautilus Empire had been wielded by a member of the Cross family for nearly a thousand years by that point.)_

Unfortunately, Lavi lost all of his memory of Innocence and his eye following that incident. Allen and I, no longer capable of Invoking, watched quietly as the redheaded amnesiac wandered off with the same Bookman that Master's brother had travelled with.

 _(Interestingly enough, Lavi took to using his real name as an exorcist. I would almost wonder if being told he would fight with the same Innocence that his father had wielded had prompted his memory of his name to return.)_

 _(But then, by that reasoning, Lavi Bookman would have refused to return to an old name._

 _Bookman took great pains to ensure that his newest apprentice would know better than to have reason to join the War as anything but an impassive historian. He had learned from Master's brother's mistake.)_

 _(What he didn't count on was the fact that Lavi Bookman was still Lavi Cross – and there has never been a generation in the Cross family where there were no potential exorcists. What he didn't count on was the fact that, like Eve before them, the Cross family could never sit back and hide from a fight._

 _What he didn't count on was Lavi's need to be surrounded with people. The youngest Cross had lived for the first nine years of his life surrounded by his father's pirate crew, in a warm, welcoming home located by the docks of a busy port town. Lavi Cross had never done well when alone._

 _Given such a busy, crowded home filled with friends so close they might as well be family, with the weapon he had so admired his father for almost a decade prior… It's no wonder that Lavi subconsciously chose a side._

 _But then, the Cross family were once descendants of Eve. Is it any wonder that a Cross chose the side opposed to the Noah Clan? Of course, they would follow their matriarch's lead… It's what they had always done…)_

How Allen Died and Master Returned

Allen never dealt well with Master's passing. Final Stand was silent, mocking Allen's despair with his refusal to acknowledge Allen as the owner of the body. Final Stand seemed to think that Allen's depression was a sign that Allen was weak and should not be the dominant personality. He never actually said a word to my Evening Child, and I doubt Allen realized he had an extra passenger.

 _(This was all for the better. Allen had enough self-recrimination on his shoulders. He did not need the extra blame heaped onto him by a child barely strong enough to earn the title of Apocryphos.)_

Allen journeyed with Master's brother for a time, and heaped even more guilt onto his shoulders when Master's brother died.

He also made the foolish call to approach the Earl for help in returning Master's brother. Granted, he did that to reactivate me, but it was a risk that Master would have forbidden, had he known of it.

When I Invoked, I was surprised to discover that I had reverted to the weaker form I had inhabited back when Allen was still a child. It seems that my long fight with Final Stand had been more damaging than I had thought.

I kept this form for many years, Final Stand silently seething at how useless he had become in this old, much-hated state. At long last, when Allen travelled to Mater to retrieve Misleading Rhythm, Final Stand could take it no longer. He attempted to manifest himself, resulting in my form warping to allow his blade to form.

I resisted. This was my show, so to speak, and I refused to allow my jealous younger sibling to have a part in it. He had had enough influence, what with his forcing me to retreat back to the form Master had released me from.

My form became increasingly unstable as we began to fight once more, bringing Allen phantom pains as we did so.

Finally, we encountered one of the fragments of Adam. He destroyed my physical form, and severely damaged my brother. Allen was nearly killed, and while he recovered Final Stand and I fought in the bowels of the Black Order's Asian headquarters.

 _(Allen attempted many times to resonate with me, but I was too busy trying to be rid of my weaker sibling to mind him.)_

After close to a week's worth of nonstop combat, Final Stand finally submitted to me once and for all. Unlike me, he was not able to move a portion of his body away from the destructive grasp of the Noah's Dark Matter, and had been near fatally wounded by the attack. While my core continued to prosper in Allen's chest, Final Stand was nearly dead. With our last clash, I defeated him and absorbed what little remained of his core.

At long last, I was ready to return to Allen's side. Unfortunately, Allen was done for the day, and when I pleaded with him to return so I could remake his arm, Allen ignored me.

 _(To be fair, I had been ignoring him for the better part of a week. Still, I felt that he was being very petty. Killing Final Stand had been very difficult and attention-consuming.)_

He ended up returning to defeat the Level Three that had gotten in by using Master's Ark. I boiled at the sight of it. Master's Ark did not belong to Adam's fragments and it never would.

Allen and I reunited and defeated the Level Three before stepping into Master's Ark, my hometown and birthplace, to locate the Earl.

We rediscovered the other exorcists, including Lavi and Iron Hammer, both of whom were very pleased to see us. Since the others were attempting to defeat the Noah Clan, we also aided them, following them into Master's Ark.

There, Allen and I finally broke the Critical Point and I summoned my blade – or rather, Final Stand's blade. I had taken its form along with the rest of my brother's essence.

 _(Allen was so, so confused to realize that my Symphony of the Lost was replaced with Final Stand's Sword of Exorcism. But he was also very grateful to me for giving him Master's iconic blade.)_

Unfortunately, the Earl and Dream recognized Master's sword and finally connected Allen with Master. They flew into a rage and attempted to kill him. When we returned to the Black Order, so too did the CROW spell casters that had stalked us for so long.

Central knew enough about aIIeN's true loyalties to be suspicious of him, despite all of his attempts to pretend to be as loyal to the Black Order as the character of "Allen Walker" demanded.

 _("Allen Black" was cold and callous and cared not a whit about anyone else. He wouldn't greet anyone or smile or ever make an effort appear harmless or friendly. He allowed his disgust for the Black Order to be clearly visible in everything he did and didn't do._

 _"_ _Allen Walker", by comparison, was a bright, smiling, joyful character with a comical black streak as far as Kanda and card games were concerned. He had unswerving faith in everyone and was a friendly and supportive as could be._

 _Walker was the perfect mask for Allen's utter loathing for the Black Order.)_

 _(It's a pity that Leverrier saw through it right away…)_

Central and its spell caster spies were far more of a nuisance than any one organization had a right to be. The incidents with the Second and Third Exorcists said more about just how low into the disgusting pits of depravity they had sunk than any words could possible describe.

Following Kanda and Karma's displacement to Mater, Allen was tossed into a cell. There, he suffered as Master began to reawaken.

After a few days of steadily weakening, one of the youngest Apocryphos, younger than even Final Stand had been, attempted to kill Allen.

The little fool failed, and just as Final Stand had not known what he was doing, so too was Mirage Visage completely oblivious to how much harm his actions were doing.

The Truth of the Ark and Eden's Garden

Despite what the Noah and the Black Order idiots think, the Heart is not a piece of Innocence. It is a Noah, the first Noah, who's innocence when saving the animals in the Ark created the first and oldest fragments.

On that Ark, things went south, so to speak, very quickly.

In the beginning, there were two brothers, Noah and Adam. Sometime later, two women came to be in the Garden of Eden. Noah fell in love with the youngest of the two, the vivacious redheaded Eve. He married her, and together they built many things, ranging from a gate to the outside of Eden to a quaint home decorated with all the instruments that they could think of.

Eve's elder sister, Lilith, had no want nor any need for a husband, and set about to build herself a home where she could tend to the creatures that lived alongside them. She took up residence near a deep lake, where she and her sister loved to swim.

Noah's brother, Adam, on the other hand lusted after both women. Seeing as Noah had already married and settled down with Eve, he turned his unwanted affections upon Lilith.

He attempted to force her to marry him, and when she refused, he stormed away to complain to his unsympathetic older sibling. On his way, there, a visitor caught his attention. Someone had slipped through the gates of Eden.

He turned to the newcomer, surprised by their presence. It was a snake, who looked up at him and asked what was the matter with him. When Adam finished explaining his grievances, the snake told him that it had a plan. The first step was for Adam to pretend to forget Lilith for a while and turn his attentions onto Eve.

When Lilith told him to stop intruding on her sister's marital bliss, Adam claimed that he would not do so until he himself had a bride. Reluctantly, and sensing a plot, Lilith agreed but asked to inform her sister and brother-in-law.

Pleased, Adam allowed her to do so, but as she visited, the snake returned. The snake said that since he had listened to the reptile once before and found his advice to be sound, Adam should listen to him one last time.

The snake said that the apple tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden would give the eater special knowledge. He said that since Adam was not as talented or as handsome as his brother, he should eat from this tree before the wedding, so that he would also appear to be a desirable husband to Lilith. The golden-haired woman would not be so reluctant to wed should Adam seem as smart as she herself was.

Adam agreed to these poisoned words and went to eat from the tree. At once, the Garden's light dimmed and the plant life began to wilt slightly. The tree had been a source of power to it, and without the apples on the branches, the Garden began to die.

After eating his apple, Adam went to Lilith's favorite lake to wed her. Concerned about the Garden, she asked for a delay in their nuptials, so that they could investigate what was wrong with the Garden.

Adam, mind poisoned by the serpent's insinuation that he was not good enough for Lilith and body already sick from eating the apple, was incensed by her refusal to go through with their bonding. Furious, he shoved at her and threw her into the lake, where he held her under.

Lilith tried to struggle free, but was soon drowned.

The latent power inside of the apple had poisoned Adam, and that combined with the magic inside Eden forced a change in the young man. It gave him enhanced strength and abilities, but beyond that, it changed his appearance from that of a man to a repulsive creature.

When Eve arrived a few moments after Lilith's death, intending to inquire if either her sister or her brother-in-law knew what was going on with the Garden, it was to discover Lilith's corpse floating in the water. Standing above her was a creature that she could barely identify as Adam.

Adam's skin had turned the rotted grey color of mold, and his hair had become the same dark blue as the water he had drowned Lilith in. His eyes had become as golden as his almost-spouse's hair.

Driven mad by the apple's power, the poisonous words of the snake, and the feeling of Lilith dying under him, Adam decided that if he couldn't have one sister, then he would have the other.

When Noah arrived only a few minutes later, attempting to find the others, he instead came across a strange creature vaguely resembling his brother that was forcing itself upon Eve, and Lilith dead in the water.

Bewildered but enraged, Noah attacked the creature, only to discover that it was in fact his brother. Even more furious with his sibling, Noah drove him out of Eden, then attended to his wife and her sister.

They buried Lilith together, and then Noah went to seal Eden's gates while Eve grieved at her sister's gravestone. He returned to find the serpent near his wife, insisting that she was carrying Adam's child and that Noah would never want a woman who carried someone else's child. The snake said that if she wanted to know the truth of his words, she should eat the remaining apple on the tree in the center of the Garden.

Noah interrupted the snake's attempt to tempt Eve out of the Garden. Furious now that he knew what had driven his sibling insane and what had crippled the Garden, he threw out the serpent and comforted his wife.

Several months later, Eve gave birth to a child that looked just as monstrous as Adam had. While horrified, Noah and Eve attempted to raise the child to be as kind as they possibly could, so that it would never become like Adam. Unfortunately, the child proved to have the same madness as its sire, for as soon as the child learned how, it threw open the gates to Eden and Adam returned.

In his exile from the Garden, Adam had learned how to control the vast amount of power the apple had given him. When he returned, he decided to overtake Eden and claim it and Eve as his. His child came to him, wanting to be praised for allowing his return, but Adam killed the child instead.

Reluctant to harm his brother, but unwilling to let him do any more harm to Eden and his family, Noah went out to fight Adam. He was incapable of defeating the monster that Adam had become, but instead, alongside Eve, splintered Adam into many people, each carrying only a vague memory of Adam and a small portion of Adam's ill-gotten power.

While they were doing this, however, the serpent returned to Eden and stole the final apple on the tree. As the serpent was incapable of eating it himself, he instead moved to give it to the splintered people Adam had become.

Noah and Eve were soon after informed by their other children that the last apple had gone missing and they hurried to the tree. As they returned to the tree, they saw the flora of the Garden wither away and die, and by the time they reached the tree where their other children stood, the Garden had become barren. Horrified, they attempted to save the tree so that Eden would not dissolve completely, but before they could do much, there was a loud roaring noise.

When they returned to the outer gates of Eden, it was to find that the serpent had, in its attempt to reconstruct Adam, split apart the apple it had stolen. Doing so had released a great flood of power, which manifested as an actual flood of water.

Panicking, Noah and Eve used the last of the tree's power to conjure a roof over Eden's sky and the cube-shaped container weathered its way through the flood.

Eventually, Noah and Eve built a great tower over the site where the tree used to sit, and their children helped them build homes to fill the empty void left when the plants died. When the flood finally stopped, they moved Eden to the top of the water, where they discovered that the land around Eden had finally become something other than the wasteland they had always known it to be. They finally allowed all the restless animals to leave and make their homes in the earth around them.

Years later, Noah and Eve passed on, and were reborn into their own descendants. This pattern continued for some time as their descendants slowly migrated out of the city of Eden. Over time, Noah noticed that his long exposure to the power of Eden, now stored in the tower over the tree's resting ground, allowed him to make small glowing cubes that spoke to him. Eve, who had not spent as much time in the tower, could not make the cubes but unlike every other human, she could hear them speak.

One day, they discovered what had happened to Adam. His splintered selves had figured out how to take on the appearance of Noah and Eve's descendants and had interbred with them. The insane fragments of Adam were no longer capable of remembering anything about the Garden of Eden, but faintly remembered their brother's name. They had renamed themselves the Noah clan.

When Noah and Eve confronted them, they discovered that the strange glowing cubes were capable of harming Adam's fractured selves.

However, when one was killed, it was simply reborn in the body of one of its descendants, making it impossible to kill the Noah off. Noah and Eve fought them valiantly for years, but eventually the Noah clan took over the city of Eden, which they renamed the Ark.

Around the same time that the Noah clan took over the Ark, Noah and his wife discovered that they could pass on the ability to use the glowing cubes, renamed Innocence. However, the cost of doing so was Eve's memories of Eden and Noah's ability to use the Ark in every life. Master Noah's full rebirth also became detectable to the Noah clan, although his every death took his existence from their minds.

They made the sacrifice anyway, and so the present-day conditions came to be. I was one of the Innocence fragments born when Master and Eve were still in control of the Ark.

I am one of the few who still remember this.

And now, I stand in the Ark, in the home that Master and Eve once built to house their budding family, and I watch as Master grieves for Allen.

And I hope that one day soon Master will find Eve's reincarnation.

 **Author's Note:**

So, does anyone read my profile, where I put all of the update info? I don't blame you, it's kind of a weird place to put the update stuff… Should have thought of that earlier, but oh well.

In case anybody got confused during the story, Purgatory comes closest to knowing what's going on. aIIeN refused to talk to Purgatory for years and made flawed assumptions about Purgatory's view of Nea, and Nea just flat out doesn't remember anything about Innocence in this life. Neither of them have the full picture and neither of them have stopped to listen to Purgatory long enough to find out what's _really_ going on.

Anyway, this is the final part of _The History We Shared_. I love this verse (and hate that the constraints of it forced me to kill off aIIeN) so I _might_ do more snippets/scenes from a What If? version of this. I make no promises though. I've finally started college, and it's killing me.

Speaking of snippets, I'm currently working on a _D. Gray Man Snippets_ story. Is anybody interested in how Lavi Cross forgot who he was and became Lavi Bookman? Because I haven't finished Ch. 1 of _DGM Snippets_ , but the first snippet runs in a sort-of parallel story line to _The History We Shared_. I say sort of, because this is a behind-the-scenes-in-a-parallel-universe kind of thing where the events of _THWS_ happened, but the snippet's storyline was also going on behind closed doors where nobody else could see/tell aIIeN/Nea/Purgatory what's happening. And, then, you know. The break-out-of-the-Black-Order thing happened so they were _really_ out of the loop. It may or may not exist in a version of _THWS_ where aIIeN survives, I'm not quite certain of all the details yet.

 _D. Gray Man Snippets_ is probably going to be the DGM equivalent of my Harry Potter story collection, _The Consequences of Crashing Death's Wedding_ , so if any of you dear readers have read that, that's what's in store for you.

To find out what happened to Lavi Cross (how he lost his memory and his eye and family, etc.) you only really have to read the last italicized section of the first snippet. Everything else, including the entire first half of that snippet, is optional. Still, I hope you read it and enjoy it as much as you (hopefully) enjoyed reading _The History We Shared_!


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